


'cause there's no one else in this world that i'd rather be unhappy with

by arbhorwitch



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:07:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbhorwitch/pseuds/arbhorwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q can break records and hack his way out of a paper bag, yet Bond is a mystery he cannot solve, has become the dust on his shelves and the crinkled corners of his most well-read and favorite books. Bond comes here when he’s injured or otherwise preoccupied with post-adrenaline highs, sits on the edge of Q’s bathtub and lets Q pluck out shards of glass from his arm. He’ll jump from twenty storeys high and swim in freezing oceans, will banter with Q’s wit and sarcasm over the speaker and murder in the most elegant of ways. They are corrupt and damaged, and yet. </p><p>And yet. </p><p>(Or: the one where Q is sick and likes poetry and Bond likes Q.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	'cause there's no one else in this world that i'd rather be unhappy with

**Author's Note:**

> so this was basically an excuse to write sick!q with the use of siken's beautiful poetry as a way to woo someone 
> 
> that being said: everything in "'...'" and not normal quotation marks doesn't belong to me and belongs to richard siken and if you haven't read his poetry i definitely recommend it w o w his way with words is breathtaking 
> 
> anyway i've literally never written anything james bond related and i never thought i would so apologies in advance if anything is horribly Not Canon 
> 
> title: "just be" by paloma faith!!

Six months after the destruction and consequent fall of Silva, Q falls ill.

It’s not unheard of—there was a brief period of time (three weeks and four days) where he had been struck with a bad case of pneumonia, coming into work only to be sent right back home again on orders of M herself, and he’d laid in bed sick for what felt like eternity. There wasn’t enough tea in the world to cure the fever in his head or remove the cinderblocks from his lungs; it was painful, long, and he spent most of it curled up in his bed with Dominique wrapped around his feet, quiet and still in all the ways the world could not be. It wasn’t pleasant, and 005 nearly died on an assignment in Tokyo. Terrible.

Six months after the funeral of M and the rise of Mallory in her place, Q walks into Q branch and nearly falls over after a wave of dizziness settles behind his eyelids and causes him to miss a step. He remembers his desk being much closer last time, and he blames Tanner for moving his things. He’ll have _words_ later, but for right now, he focuses on regaining his balance and not tipping anyone off to the slight uneasiness in his gut; though he wasn’t head of the branch the last time he had been sick, he has the sneaking suspicion that if Mallory—M, now, he reminds himself—finds out he’s under the weather and caught in the unrelenting rain, he might send Q home on grounds of infecting everyone else. Home means dreary skies through pale blue curtains, dying within the hold of his blankets, and that’s no way for a quartermaster to perish. He’s suffered worse, sets his mug of thankfully _not_ spilled earl grey on his desk once he reaches it, brings up the screens for the day—007’s assignment in Moscow, a dangerous one to be sure, and they need to be on their toes.

“You’re looking a bit peaky,” Moneypenney says, and Q startles a bit as she sneaks up behind him. It happens far too often for his liking.  

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” he snaps out, harsher than he intended, but she just quirks an eyebrow and raises a hand to placate him. She knows, of course, because everyone damn well knows when he’s sick, steers clear of him as if he’s on a tirade, and it’s a ridiculous thought considering he’s not particularly tyrannical.

(he’s picky about his systems and has firewalls beyond firewalls to uphold his security, mi-6 be damned, and he’s only cross when someone tries to cross him. it's not often.)

It’s not worth the argument and Moneypenny doesn’t push it as Q watches 007 tuck the earpiece in on screen; he’s up and ready to go, which is for the best, and Q has the feeling that it’s going to be a long day.

 

-

Bond is stone cold edges, sharp and deadly and sheathed; Bond is death and destruction wrapped up in high class suits and liquored tongues, a dagger with poison bleeding from every chip and scratch. Q can lead him to water but cannot make him drink, and this is a common occurrence—he’ll part solid doors with a stroke of keys and snap out direction after direction, but if Bond wants to go somewhere else and do what he thinks he must, he’ll do it without a second thought.

Q can scream into the phone all he’d like, threaten to trap him in an elevator, and it’ll do nothing ninety-nine point three percent of the time, and those aren’t favorable odds. He and 007 make a good team, as he’s been told by various people, a brilliant combination of intelligence and espionage strength, a man to build the gun and palm-code it, a man to pull the trigger and splatter the walls with blood. It’s smooth and messy and Q knows that their line of work will lead them to their deaths sooner rather than later, has seen Bond fall from rooftops and catch a flight home the same day.

Sometimes, sometimes Q will come home to his flat and find a shadow in the walls, a ghost of the man that had been on the screen hours-days-weeks earlier, and after the first few times, he has a first aid kit ready _just in case_.

They’ve become something like friends. Bond will say, amidst gunfire and shells falling to the floor, “Now, quartermaster, that is no way to speak to someone who currently holds the fate of your gun in his hands,” and Q will snort and try to calm the panic in his chest. 007 has Q’s tech in company to protect, but Q has a living, breathing man to keep safe. No one said MI-6 was fair, just efficient.

So it’s no surprise when Bond’s voice is curious and clear over the speaker as he says, “You sound ill,” because they’ve become something like friends and Bond is trained to read people, and perhaps that includes the echoes and jumps in voices, the tics and cough-laden words.

Q does his best to ignore Moneypenny’s knowing look. It’s not so much that he’s sick, but that he’s so obviously unable to hide it, a half-hearted but fully heated, “I’m _fine_ , focus on the target, 007,” spilling from his lips before he can stop himself.

“Stubborn,” Bond notes, but he sounds amused. Q wants to rip the smugness from his voice and set it on fire, take the self-righteousness and bury it until there’s nothing but James, just James.

 

-

It’s a long day, as Q has predicted, but it ends with blood and a plane ticket home. All in all, a success, and it’s the small victories that count.

He goes home; the look Moneypenny shoots him the moment he even falters in leaving the branch is enough to get him to quit for the night, and it’s a sign that his migraine is worsening if he’s so quick to leave. It’s nothing a few ibuprofens and a mug of peppermint tea can’t fix, he supposes, and since Bond will be home within the next twenty-four hours barring incident, he can use a good night of sleep.

Dominique greets him as soon as he steps into his flat, and he resets the alarm system before dropping his bag on the counter in the kitchen and flipping on the kettle. There are no shadows tonight, just ample darkness and a staccato of drums in the base of his skull; he leans down to brush his fingers through Dominique’s fur and promises her food in just a few moments, give him a second to relax on the sofa, and it’s not until the kettle is whistling loudly that he jolts awake and nearly falls off the cushions. Dominique stares back at him, watches him with wide eyes and cat-curiosity.

“Don’t give me that look,” he mutters, running trembling hands through messy curls, and it’s then that he realizes he’s still wearing his boots and jacket. Rain sloshes against the window. Dominique mewls. His head spins cruelly.

 

-

He wakes to the sound of the TARDIS loud in his ear, his phone flashing from its seat on the coffee table. He fumbles for his glasses, tries not to question why he’s asleep on the sofa, and manages to gain enough awareness of his surroundings to unlock his screen. It’s a message, short and to the point, but it’s also two in the morning and he’s only been asleep for _maybe_ three hours; he fights the urge to smash his head off the nearest hard surface, which would be his coffee table, really, and he’d rather not have glass embedded in his forehead. He can’t explain that to M, or Bond for that matter. He has a job to do.

_Alarm is faulty. Either that or you were expecting a guest._

It’s Bond, obviously, and Q buries his face into a pillow and groans—the ache in his head has done everything but abate, torn straight from the place in his brain where migraines are torn from, and if he makes any sudden movements there’s a good chance yesterday’s breakfast will be decorating his carpet for days to come. There’s a lack of noise in his apartment, thankfully, but he knows that all he has to do is glance up and Bond will be there; he doesn’t have the energy to muster up a sense of frustration at having his flat broken into (purposely, but still, it’s the _principle_ )as easy as a stranger being pickpocketed. A thud is his only reward when his phone slips from his fingers and falls to the floor.

“Up,” a voice says, gruff and quiet and familiar, and Q would follow the directions but the whole puking thing is still, well, a _thing_ , and he’s not keen on dry-cleaning bills. “Jesus, she wasn’t exaggerating. Are you always this insufferable when ill?”

“ _Out_ ,” Q grumbles, muffled and hardly convincing. There’s a hand on his shoulder and then he’s being pulled up into something resembling a sitting position, his hand being opened, and pills being placed on his palm.

Amused, Bond offers a glass of water along with the knock-off Tylenol; Q downs them dry, probably in an attempt to prove a point but mostly because the water is too far away.

Q can break records and hack his way out of a paper bag, yet Bond is a mystery he cannot solve, has become the dust on his shelves and the crinkled corners of his most well-read and favorite books. Bond comes here when he’s injured or otherwise preoccupied with post-adrenaline highs, sits on the edge of Q’s bathtub and lets Q pluck out shards of glass from his arm. He’ll jump from twenty storeys high and swim in freezing oceans, will banter with Q’s wit and sarcasm over the speaker and murder in the most of elegant of ways. They are corrupt and damaged, and yet.

And yet.

(q, in retrospect, knows very little about bond’s past, and vice versa; he knows what the files tell him and the rumours that have been spreading since before he joined, and bond knows even less because q is good with turning cigarettes into nothing more than dead filters and wisps of smoke.)

“You read Siken,” Bond states, nodding to a half-open book resting on the table. Q shrugs, waiting for the effects of the painkillers to kick in, but he’s taken so many in the last twelve hours that he’ll need at least three more before he even has a hope of getting back to sleep.

“’A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river, but then he’s still left with the river,’” Bond quotes; Q’s breath catches in his throat for reasons he can’t fathom, a jump in his pulse that might be cause of concern regarding the amount of ibuprofen in his system. The rush in his veins is nothing more than drugs and caffeine. 

“’A man takes his sadness and throws it away,’” he says, hardly above a whisper, staring at something on the carpet that isn’t there. Nothing more than a ghost. He’s not sure who he’s talking about anymore. “’But then he’s still left with his hands.’”

“Tragic,” Bond agrees.

 

-

The next time Q wakes, it’s to rush into the bathroom and empty the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. There’s nothing much to bring up, stomach acid mostly, but it burns all the same. There’s a hand on his back and soothing his hair away from his forehead, slick with sweat, and he’d like to die if only to relieve himself of the pain lighting his body on fire.

 

-

This is the thing: he _likes_ Bond.

He likes Moneypenny, too, and he has nothing personal against Mallory. But he doesn’t have much of a social life, considering his life consists mostly of his work, which is why his relationship with Bond is so _strange_. He trusts Bond, would trust him with his life if it came down to that, and enjoys his company. When Bond appears in his flat at odd hours despite protocol stating debriefing and medical first, Q doesn’t mind; he’ll patch up what he can, snap at Bond for being so fucking _reckless_ , and in not so many words, offer him a place to sleep. He’s not sure if Bond has found a permanent place to stay, but if he has, he hasn’t mentioned it. Q is alright with that.

M doesn’t need to tell him that emotional attachment is dangerous, seeing as Q knows more than he should about Vesper, and all he can do is tread with caution.

A few months after the first time Bond had hidden in his flat, Q had dreamed of failing systems bleeding out, and no matter how much he screamed for 007 to _get out_ , he never did, blowing up in the monitors where Q could never reach him. He woke in a blind panic and slugged Bond in the jaw, leaving a nasty bruise and earning a bit of respect for his sleep-muddled efforts.

Bond had told him, “It’s a common thing, Q—ask any psyche that works with MI-6 agents.”

“Our jobs differ greatly,” Q had countered. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until—

“You hand me the gun, I pull the trigger. The only difference is that I have no choice but to feel the blood on my hands.”

 

-

The amount of bloody imagery Q could pin to their relationship should be terrifying, except that it’s not.

Bond doesn’t sleep that night and Q is vaguely awake following his episode in the bathroom, but he’s too sore to sleep and too drained to sit up and do anything. Bond sits beside him on the bed and reads the book that had been out in the living room, and then Q realizes he’s in his bed, which means Bond had carried him—he’ll feel the indignation and embarrassment later, much later.

“Read something,” he croaks, Dominique jumping up on the bed to rest along Q’s thighs. He pets her, listens to her purr. Bond’s voice sounds awfully loud in the otherwise deadened room.

“’I’m battling monsters, I’m pulling you out of the burning buildings; and you say _I’ll give you anything_ but you never come through.’”

He wants to say, _And yet you’re the one who never brings me back what I send you out with, the one who nearly kills himself at least once every week. I would give you anything, if just to keep you safe._

What he _does_ say is, “Oddly enough, I’ve never been in a burning building.”

 

-

“Why Dominique?” Bond asks him, four-oh-four in the morning and coming dangerously close to holding Q while he shivers.

“Soeur Marie,” Q manages, gripping the blankets in his hand. He can’t get warm and it’s driving him mad. “She was a singing nun—her song, Dominique, became a hit in the sixties, but later drove her and her lover to suicide in 1985 due to financial problems from—from the song.”

Bond is silent, and Q would think he’s gone if not for the dip in the bed next to him and the light breathing. He inadvertently curls in closer towards the heat Bond is radiating, and if his head manages to rest in Bond’s lap, no one says anything. Eventually, Bond does say, “A rather morbid name for a cat, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” Q agrees, digging his nails into Bond’s thigh, anchoring himself to reality. The fever can take hold all it wants, but Q is stronger, no matter how much his doctor would argue that. He never listened to his doctor anyway. “But it was also the name of my sister.”

 

-

“'Tell me how all this,'” Q begins, but Bond hushes him with a well-timed kiss. Q chokes on his words and tugs him closer, until they’re tangled under the sheets and Bond is whispering nothings into his ear.

He wonders if he’s hallucinating. A fever-dream, maybe. He hopes not.

 

-

“’Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means we’re inconsolable,’” Q hums tiredly, slipping into the kitchen at half-past seven, pyjama bottoms low on his hips and remnants of a migraine and fever still clinging to his body. Bond has made earl grey, and it’s domestic enough where Q doesn’t have to question if last night had meant anything—or perhaps he chooses not to question. Dominique mewls happily around Q’s feet, Q takes the offered mug, sips slowly while watching Bond make toast. He should be in bed. Bond should be in bed with him. Sacrifices are made for the body’s needs, and Q knows he won’t be getting to work today.

“I’ve called Moneypenny,” Bond says to the toaster. Q would laugh, but his chest thrums painfully with congestion and something else entirely. “She’s aware of the assignment details following the clean-up. And before you ask, you’re not coming into work today.”

Futile yet worth a shot, Q starts, “But—“

“No buts. 005 isn’t due out until Thursday and I’ve been assigned to ensuring your safety. You’re quite clingy, did you know?”

Q takes another sip of tea to hide his frown, Bond enjoying this more than anyone has any right to.  

“It seems as if tea and poetry are the ways to your heart, quartermaster.”

“Hmm,” he murmurs, letting his eyes fall shut as the steam from his mug clears his throat a bit. “I had a sister, once. Younger. She was very athletic. Died in a car accident when she was eleven.”

Bond doesn’t react; he’s relaxed, hip against the counter, bare except for his shorts. Another commonality. Q wants to feel the muscle ripple beneath the tips of his fingers.

“Trust, Bond. Tea is taste and poetry is food for the soul, but the heart is a different matter altogether. Tell me,” and here he rolls the words over his tongue, contemplates the meanings and the roads he’s dredging up, designing from scratch. “Tell me—do you trust me?”

He expects hesitation; he’s not disappointed when there is none.

“’Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us,’” and Q says, “It could, James,” countered with, “’These, our bodies, possessed by light,’” and maybe poetry is the way to his heart, after all.

Q sighs. Thinks. Wants to lie down with Bond at his side. He wants all of it—wants the post-assignment adrenaline and the fear of death at every turn, the surprises and the aches in his bones and knuckles. He wants to be the one to hold Bond as he falls apart in the bathtub, shards of glass in his arm and blood staining his hands. He wants, _wants_ , and it’s terrifyingly real. His head still hurts, his stomach turns at the thought of food.

(bond enjoys poetry now and then, not a first choice, but the book on the coffee table with the creases and folded corners and fingerprints caught his attention the first night he stumbled in. it was worth reading, q’s eyes a whole other shade with excitement and disbelief.)

“’Tell me,’” and this is where Q invades Bond’s space and presses his lips against Bond’s, feels the breath escape them both in a whirlwind of collapsing lungs and bursting hearts. “’Tell me we’ll never get used to it.’”

**Author's Note:**

> FUN FACT: the name of q's cat and the story that goes with it is true; it's also used in the second season of american horror story and that's where i got inspiration for his cat's name! because q with a cat is too adorable to pass up ok


End file.
